James McMurtry:
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 James McMurtry & the Heartless BastardsLive in Aught-Three Release Date: 2004 03 23 Label: Compadre Records Rating:  |
James McMurtry's written plenty of great songs, but he's never made a great album. His character sketches and stories have always rung true, and he's as perceptive a chronicler of the disaffected and alienated as you'll find, but his limited vocal range and sometimes almost-indifferent delivery have made even his best discs, Too Long in the Wasteland and Where'd You Hide the Body a struggle to get through. Live in Aught-Three isn't a great album, but the live setting lets McMurtry and his backing group, the Heartless Bastards, breathe real rock & roll life into many of these songs for the first time. "Levelland," an account of stasis in the fly-over land, aches with a longing for something, anything, that's more exciting than high-school football games and farms, and "Red Dress" burns with an angry intensity that you'd never have guessed McMurtry had in him. We also get a dose of McMurtry's deadpan humor on a few between-song asides ("I used to think I was an artist. Come to find out I'm a beer salesman") and a hilarious delineation between intellectuals and good ol' boys. In fact, the strongest material here -- and McMurtry's best work overall -- are the ones in which he finds both the humor and the pathos in quirky, nasty characters like the ticked-off heir to the worthless farmland of "60 Acres," or the twisted crew at a family reunion in "Choctaw Bingo." If McMurtry's albums haven't caught your attention before, Live in Aught-Three is a perfect opportunity to reassess him. Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, All Music Guide
Tracks:
| Title | Composer | Time | |
| 1 | Saint Mary of the Woods | Johnson, Hess, Flash, McMurtry | 6:46 |
| 2 | Fraulein O. | McMurtry | 3:54 |
| 3 | Red Dress | McMurtry | 4:59 |
| 4 | No More Buffalo | McMurtry | 6:52 |
| 5 | 60 Acres | McMurtry | 4:33 |
| 6 | Rachel's Song | McMurtry | 6:02 |
| 7 | Out Here Inthe Middle | McMurtry | 5:11 |
| 8 | Choctaw Bingo | McMurtry | 8:47 |
| 9 | Lights of Cheyenne | McMurtry, Johnson | 6:38 |
| 10 | Levelland | McMurtry | 5:37 |
| 11 | Max's Theorem | McMurtry | 1:41 |
| 12 | I'm Not from Here | McMurtry | 5:07 |
| 13 | Too Long in the Wasteland | McMurtry | 7:55 |
| 14 | Rex's Blues | VanZandt | 3:46 |
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